Posts Tagged ‘About the blog’

Why haven’t I been around Second Life much lately? In my last post, I tried to describe my feeling of Second Life being a place had shifted and I found my interactions had a different quality to them. Sure, this has been a factor in my being around Second Life less, but it wasn’t just that. Nor was it ever because I felt like SL simply became a glorified chat room as some suggested. As I alluded in the last post, there is more to the story.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a rich imagination; dreaming vividly of worlds and lives that I could clearly see in my mind’s eye. Almost in the first minutes of being in Second Life, I felt plugged into my creativity and imagination in ways that I didn’t expect. Moreover, I found myself excited by the promise of SL; that it gave me opportunities for exploration and communication and connection that I would never have imagined. For an idealist with some deep dreams, it felt like a limitless horizon.

The real story here isn’t Second Life, but of me. I’m a dreamer for all sorts of reasons, but one of those reasons has long been a means of escape; when things got unpleasant when I was little, I learned I could build something favorable in my mind. So while I was excited by the promise of SL, it also became an interest at a time when my first life was filled with stress. While it was true that I was coming to SL because of the promise I felt it held, I also came to SL to escape and to fill needs that weren’t being met in my first life. Here’s where my spiral began: I would log into SL to escape and deferred addressing some of my RL issues which led to more stress and nurtured the need for more escape. Let me be clear about one thing, I am grossly oversimplifying this with the benefit of hindsight; there were lots of factors playing into my issues with my SL and my RL, but I would also describe this as the overarching theme. The upshot of it all? I’ve been away because I felt I needed to be away. My time in RL has been well spent taking care of some things that needed attention; while things are far from perfect, they are much better than they were.

What does all this mean? I’ve not given up on Second Life at all, the same holds true about my belief in the promise of virtual worlds. I still love SL, but will simply be around less. For those of you who know me in-world, you *will* see me again, but it is likely to be for moments here and there. In a related vein, not that I’ve blogged much lately, but this also likely to be my last post; I would like to thank everyone for playing along so nicely as I’ve thought out loud about my virtual life over the years. So, thanks again, and so long! And, as Vera Lynn so beautifully sang, “We’ll meet again/Don’t know where/Don’t know when/But I know we’ll meet again/Some sunny day.”

By my reckoning, Linden Lab owes me an hour or two of my life. Not because of the time I’ve spent in Second Life, but because of time waiting politely due to the SL bug in IMs where it will tell you that “so and so is typing…” when they really aren’t. I can’t begin to tell you the number of loooong silences that have happened as a result. I usually sheepishly follow up with “are you typing or is SL lying?” The person then tells me they aren’t and we follow it up with a giggle, of course, but only after we’d been scratching out heads and wondered what happened. A couple of minutes here and a couple of minutes there really do add up! Anywho, just throwing this out there, dear readers, it is a bug that drives me up a tree and who knows, maybe some day Linden Lab will fix it…

After hearing the consistent refrain from friends and loved ones — why don’t you have a blog about Second Life? — I have finally decided to start one. Why now you ask? That is a very good question, but between feeling ready for a project that might help me somehow contribute to the Second Life community and deciding that I could try this without it letting it become a huge time sink, it simply felt like I should. Let’s hope I’m right.

So what is this blog about? Well, because my Second Life is so much about connections with others, my blog is too. My hope is that it will be is a mix of opinion and conversations with fascinating avatars who make up this world (and some silliness thrown in for good measure). While I stand in awe of the technology behind Second Life (which may well involve Pixies for all I know), I’ve found that it is the people in Second Life truly give it its dimension and depth. This world has so many amazing, passionate and creative people who shape it to be such a wondrous place; I plan to have interviews with a wide range of people in SL to get a bit of a look at why they’re here. It will also be a place where I can share other thoughts in more than 140 character bursts (ahem, Twitter and Plurk). And if you’re reading this, thank you for being here! I do hope you’ll keep reading. Please feel free to send me your suggestions and criticisms as I grow and learn; your thoughts will help this blog be more interesting.

Finally, a special thanks to my friend Botgirl Questi for the title of the blog. I think she had other designs for it and appreciate her generously sharing her creativity.